ROOSEVELT"S PREDICAMENT.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 47, 18 November 1937, Page 4

ROOSEVELT''S PREDICAMENT.

Like many anotlier zealous reformer placecL in a position of antbority, Pfesident Pranklin Roosevelt has found hinlself up against something like a dead-end before aehieving his purpose. ;When he set out to put kis "New Deal" theory into practice everything went swimmingly up to a point. At the outset he thought all that -vvould he Wanted would be, with State assistance, to give industrial and cominereial actiyities a fresh start and that then the maehinery would resume functioning as usual and national tecovery would be an accomplished fact. KWith typical American facility for adopting Snappy and attractive metaphor, he called it "priming the punips" when he began pouring in Government funds to assist in relieving the stagnatioh that had fallen upon the country 's business activities, with its consequent problem of unemployment among millionS of willing hands. Though, after a while, there were quite favourable indications that real revival was on the way, it has beeh only as a result of his continuing the process of poitring in and, as a matter of faet, the superficial appearance of prosperity was in the main merely the return to the surfaee of some of the money he had poured in. The real irrigating reservoirs of aetive and well directed eapital had scarcely been tapped. Thus, after four years or more of his administration, he finds himself with a national debt increased not by millions but by billions of dollars and with depression again threatening to fall upon the the country. So it is that he now discovers that, to restore real prosperity on a lasting basis, something a good deal more is needed than a lavish outpouring of governmental funds raised by borrowing and taxing. It is therefore with a rather humbled recognition of the failure of his own so facile plans that we have him now appealing to private eapital and private enterprise to come to his aid and show itself out more effectively. .On the other side, however, those to whom he makes this appeal ask in their turn 'that they should sbe given assur- i anee of some relief from the new restrietions and the new burdens that have already been placed upon industrial enterprise, with the prospect of perhaps more to follow, In short, what is required is that confidenee should be restored and industry and trade allowed to redevelop themselves along normal lines without governmental competition and with the mininmm of governmental interference consonant with the safeguarding of the rights of the community as a whole and of all its elasses. [What is needed is the institution of stahle conditions within which industry and business may feel themselves at liberty to operate freely without fear of suffering serious checks from further legislative and administrative experiments. It may not be, of course, that it will be altogether easy to reconeile the views of the President and the big industrialists. It can scarcely but be, however, that Mr. Roosevelt has noted the processes by which Great Britain has pulled lierself out of the depths of the depression and placed lierself in the forefront of the world's economic recovery. There no recourse has been had to spectacnlar artificial devices. What the Government has done has been to provide all possible facilities for industry and trade to re-adapt themselves to changed conditions, at the same time not neglecting the humanitarian side of government. l1he result has been that industry and trade have been able, as in no other country, to lift themselves fairly clear of the slough into which they had been dragged by world-wide conditions, which, by the way, had their origin in no small measure in America. Remissions of'taxation have been made whenever possible, while no complaint has been heard when a recent increase in it was necessitated for rearmament purposes. President Roosevelt can scarcely but look upon these results with something like envious eyes and perhaps see that he may have a lesson to learn from tliem. In any event, he is displaying no little anxiety to enter into more intimate and friendly trade relations with the country that has done so well for itself with nothing like the immense intemal resourcs of his own.